[CharlesRoberts]

>Ones who keep up their skills

To get a rough idea of the value of up-to-date skills vs apparent age, let's consider a hypothetical:

If both a 50 and 24 year-old graduate from the same coding boot-camp, do they have equal odds of being seen after the first interview? (let alone actual employment)

And how big is the difference in probabilities?

I also note that desktop games are primarily coded in C++/C. If hiring is skill based then we would expect that industry to be zealously recruiting older engineers.

[Zenst]

Sadly from experience, HR will blindly screen them out and speil the usual "overqualified" excuse to not progress. That they regularly do and get away with.

Had situation exactly like that once and I bypassed HR straight to manager who lambasted HR, got interview and the job, still got shafted by HR who messed up salary, lied about rise and generally made my life hell with pettiness and bullying for want of another way of putting it. That is along with one person in HR taking my side and telling me what her manager was upto and next thing, that person was gone. So yeah - HR causes many of these ageist issues when it comes to the situation you outline.

[jonfw]

What I've heard about game development (correct me if you disagree) is that it is typically higher demanding or lower paying than gigs in other fields. What I've heard is that it's only worth being in that industry if you're passionate about it. I think older engineers will trend towards less demanding or higher paying industries, and are less likely to have as serious of passions towards gaming

[sukilot]

Boot camps aren't "up or date skills" but to the extent that 24 year olds are getting hired off them would still support your point.

Why do you assume young people don't learn C++ to work on games? They do to work on web servers.

The AAA in AAA games refers to media content, not the game engine. Game programers are a trivial fraction of the C/C++ industry.

[blaser-waffle]

24 year olds aren't getting Senior or Mid-Level Dev salaries. They know the new hotness and are cheap -- that's good enough.